Hanging Garden

The best albums of 2017 contains 60 albums that I listened enough to warrant them a place in this list. Scroll further down for the best tracks as a Spotify playlist and a few pickups that I missed in 2016. Hyperlinks lead to reviews.

Best albums of 2017

Near perfect (9+)

Loss — Horizonless– funeral doom / deathdoom – Horizonless by Loss is a giant of a funeral doom album. It portrays a wide dispersal of moods, shifting between beautiful, crushing and ominous. The instrumentation and sounds are all top level, even the bass guitar comes to the fore time to time. Horizonless seeped among the best albums of 2017 slowly. I dare to say this is my favourite doom release from the US since Morgion’s criminally underknown Cloaked by Ages, Crowned in Earth (2004).

Very good (9-)

Grave Pleasures — Motherblood– death rock / post-punk – Everything that Beastmilk, who later renamed themselves to Grave Pleasures did right in the first album Climax (2013) also comes in place on Motherblood. The blasphemous lyrics, deathrock and catchy pop hooks groove together elegantly again. The album retains a strong base level through it’s length. Tracks like Joy Through Death dance between two worlds masterfully. It could be an eulogy or as well just a piece of dark humorous obscenity!

Hebosagil — Fortuna / Auta– noise rock / post-metal / hardcore punk – Bursting with melodies and aggression. I don’t think they’ve ever before had this many pop hooks. On the other hand, the 2nd track Auta still flirts with drone and noise rock with violently paranoid lyrics…

Good+ (8½)

Oranssi Pazuzu — Kevät / Värimyrsky – Psychedelic black metal / stoner doom – Pazuzu re-released their split with Candy Cane with the name Farmakologinen, it’s a 9+/10 album but also released a brand new great single. Värimyrsky is a welcome nod back to their old days.

Slægt — Domus Mysterium – black metal / heavy metal – I really liked the 2015 EP Beautiful and Damned so it’s really welcome to see they are as good a full-length band!

Wintersun — The Forest Seasons– symphonic metal /progressive metal / melodic metal – Wintersun’s The Forest Seasons might be the album that has split most opinions in 2017. It currently stands at 56 % in Metal Archives which cannot be based on music alone. For the musics in this music album are mostly solid as heck. First three tracks (clocking over 40 minutes) are packed with memorable melodies, good songwriting and fine sounding symphonics. Wintersun is not a one trick pony solely based on power metal and melodeath. The album has a few aces up its sleeve. For example, most melodeath bands might not try their skills in black metal or melancholic doom.

Glanko — Osmosi – Sci-fi IDM – Dark toned themes with sci-fi elements. Glanko has matured and found great melody lines to accompany beats more diverse than ever. Perfect music for reading sci-fi like Dan Simmonds Hyperion quartet! You can add / remove half a point depending if you are reading sci-fi or not!

Sun of The Sleepless — To The Elements – atmospheric black metal

Good+ (8+)

Vallenfyre — Fear Those Who Fear Him– oldschool death metal with connections to Paradise Lost, My Dying Bride and Abhorrence. Not surprisingly, the best moments on Fear Those Who Fear Him are the slower doomier bits. The sound of the album is quite perfect for this kind of music altogether. Really powerful, far from crystal clear, yet not muddy at all. Piercing, rumbling and ferocious.

The Moth Gatherer — The Comfortable Low – post-metal / post-rock

Wear Your Wounds — WYW– slowcore / post-rock / shoegaze – side-project of Converge’s Jacob Bannon. The highs are really high if you’ve always digged the slower tracks of Converge. WYW strips down almost all heavy guitars and is quite a melancholic slowcore / post-rock / shoegaze album. Unsurprisingly the heaviest moments rank among the best.
There’s over 20 minutes of boring material in the midst of 63 minutes so I’m ranking it more for the good points than for the bad. Just skipping the last two tracks already makes it great. Still difficult to get into.

Ayreon — The Source (album 1) – progressive rock / musical

AlNamrood — Enkar – Middle Eastern blackened deaththrash – one of the biggest growers of the year, initially I did not even like Enkar it as it does not repeat the mystic and even majestic atmospheric tricks of their 2015 album Diaji Al Joor. Enkar is quite a punk album compared to Diaji but after over 10 listens the Middle Eastern instrumentation, nuances and straightforward fierce song-writing started to really feel like a tight package.

Good (8ish)

Over the Voids… — Over The Voids – black metal

James Elkington — Wintres Woma – singer-songwriter / acoustic / folk – At best Elkington channels Nick Drake’s gentle guitar virtuosity. Fortunately he is not a one-trick pony but I admit I’m a sucker for the more complicated pickings.

The Faceless — In Becoming a Ghost – progressive death metal – Half really good (Digging The Grave, The Spiraling Void, Shake The Disease, I Am, half of Black Star), the rest is filler. Extra points from how the melodramatic intro sets up Digging the Grave. The jumpiest album start since Ghost of Perdition by Opeth!

8-

Ochre — Beyond The Outer Loop – idm / downtempo / ambient

Troldhaugen — Idio+syncrasies– avant-garde metal / humour metal – Half funny, half annoying, half great. This is a true love it or hate it album, yet I am inbetween because the compositions are mostly great but vocals oft times annoyingly over freaky. The metalcore / crabcore influences aren’t that much of my liking either, some of the avant-garde elements are outrageously good and only a few outrageously annoying (the rap part of It’s Morphine Time, yet the chorus is a hilarious stadium rock sing-a-long). The album has hints of Crotchduster-like greatness. Bullseye track has the best track title of the year: I Ordered A Taxi Driver Not A Taxidermy.

Wvrm — Can You Hear The Wind Howl – grindcore / death metal – 10 minutes is just the right length for this kind of furious album. 6 tracks with a 3 minute doomy headbanger in the midst. Epic track length in their standards.

Hanging Garden — I Am Become – atmospheric rock / doom metal – Blackout Whiteout was one of the biggest surprises of 2015, the first tastes of I am Become were great, yet it did not have the growth of the last album. The best bits Kouta and Our Dark Design are top class and the album does not really have bad sections either.

Lantern — II: Morphosis – new wave of Finnish oldschool dark death metal in the vein of Demigod and Convulse

7½

Kardinaalit — Primus Culpa – experimental / rock / humour – Primus Culpa demo should be annoying but mostly it is actually funny. These guys also have some high class material in their soundcloud (also a lot of junk), eagerly awaiting if they piece their shit together out of humour terrains and develop their stronger tracks. At least 3-4 are already fully ready and would be a backbone of a very strong release

Vulture Industries — Stranger Times – progressive metal / avant-garde metal – The first three tracks of the album are really fucking good which is why it’s such a shame that the rest of the album is strangely mediocre to almost useless. Three other tracks do stand out a bit. Something Vile’s last half is driven by good lead guitars and heavy drum pounding, matching the beginning. Midnight Draws Near and Screaming Reflections do have great vocals and good dynamic going on but constantly slow paced pretty good compositions fail to resonate much after the beginning of the album does everything a few notches better.

Pillorian —Obsidian Arc – atmospheric black metal

7+

Ne Obliviscaris — Urn – progressive metal

KANASHIMI — INORI – depressive black metal / funeral doom / japanese pop influences – yes you read right, Scar of the heart is a bullseye of a track, a nicely unique dsbm sound. Then the one man project repeats it nearly all album long… Classic one man band problem really.

Skyclad — Forward Into The Past – folk metal / heavy metal – metal-observer’s review seemed to sum most of my thoughts. I just have to add the best track “Change Is Coming” is at part with almost any of their tracks and “State of The Union Now” a fresh reminder of their thrash past. Judging by the 2015 album Atom by Atom, Steve Ramsay might just leave his best tracks for his other project, Satan.

Alfahanne — Det Nya Svarta– post-punk / death rock – One track miracle Satans Verser, probably the best rock track of the year, there’s a good mellow post-punk atmosphere but Avgrundsgravitation and Det Nya Svarta are the only tracks that completely succeed in tension. Mitt mörkär är mörkäre än ditt is weirdly catchy, I can’t quite put my hand on it, if i like it or don’t. Same catchiness goes for Även an Hund Har Sin Dag. For a while I thought the album is great until it crashed down to mediocre. I admit I might like it more if I bothered to understand more of the lyrics.

Ayreon — The Source (album 2)– progressive rock / musical

Paradise Lost — Medusa – doom metal / death doom

Okay- (6½) aka class c black metal

Fleurety — The White Death– One track miracle The Ballad of The Copernicus, few ok tracks besides it (White Death, Future Day). Special credit to the worst riff of the year in the peculiarly, chosen single track Lament of the Optimist.

Ajattara — Lupaus – black metal – One track miracle Saatanan Sinetti, few good tracks besides it (Sinä, last half of Lupaus). Most lyrics a bit stupid: Pimeä, pimeä, kuolema, kuolema blah blah blah.. Special credit to stupidest choruses of the year in Ristinkirot and Machete. Too bad as Machete is musically quite a great headbanger.

Charnel Winds — Verschränkung – Avant-garde metal / black metal

Asagraum — Potestas Magicum Diaboli – black metal

Best tracks of 2017

Best tracks arranged to a playlist in quite random order. Playlist in text-pdf format + a few tracks that aren’t in Spotify: Best_tracks_of_2017

The gig Vernissa hosted could be described as a tremendous set of affordable atmospheric Finnish metal. Each of the bands is yet to gain the attention they deserve, probably because the members of each band aren’t kids anymore. They seem to be mainly around and plus 30s and have more in life than just bands.

The Chant may not be in metal-archives but they still have plenty of kick in them with the atmospheric late Anathema like soaring. Crib45 represents modern Post-Metal at its basic majestic form and Hanging Garden a sort of mixture of melodic death, again late Anathema/Katatonia, and perhaps a pinch of doom as well (combined with shameless pop hooks and idiotic cover art).

The gig was allowed for all ages but for once the drinking area for people over 18 was smartly placed. Pretty much the whole place was 18+ except the side where people came in. Far too often these areas seem to be designated for keeping people with alcohol crammed as far away as possible. Not this time, excellent Vernissa!

The Chant was a great opener. Their playlist included tracks like Minotaur, Falling Kind and Earthen which are my personal favourites of their 2014 release New Haven. Falling Kind managed to set up a good amount of goosebumps too. Stage was quite crowded, was it 7 or 8 people on it? It did not result in wall-of-sound though, the dynamic was very much present.

The last track Come To Pass caught me by surprise as I did not remember it being such a blissful build up. The album version does not do full justice to its magnitude indeed.

Crib45… or like my Belgian friend says it needs to be pronounced NOT “Crib fortyfive” BUT “Crib neljäviis” (as they call their band that in their stage banter) …presented an expected heavier boost to the gig. They’ve been accused of being a carbon copy of Cult of Luna, and they do sound very alike. The difference between a blatant copy and Crib45 is that Cribneljäviis does their thing so damn well and the passion is so present it is very hard to accuse them being just a copy.

Again the last track Into The Abyss was the highlight. Its end with minutes of robotic posturing with a repetitive riff leading to epic end with surprising dual vocals works magnificently in a live setting.

Only thing that I do not think is very impressive on album or live is the end where music fades out but clean vocals and growls continue on for a long while. Friend accurately commented it sounding “like a humour band”. It is a brave move nevertheless. I was also glad to hear Waiting For Deliverance. I am only familiar with their newest album, 2014 Marching Through the Borderlines though. Their slot was under 1 hour, so these two monsters took about half of it already (some I missed because of beer and scenic Vantaa riverviews).

Hanging Garden‘s setlist seemed to be similar as their Lahti gig warming up Swallow The Sun a couple weeks earlier. They started with Borrowed Eyes where I am always taken aback on how much the vocals sound like Pasi Koskinen (ex-Amorphis 1995-2004). Only in the first lines though. Embers with its piercing piano lines and melancholic popdoom worked pretty damn well. Yeah I just made that genre up.

The Vinyl cover art is pretty damn nice (and their shirts)

I was pleased how good HG sounded after strong efforts by The Chant and Crib45. Also the final track before last encore 10 000 cranes from At Every Door (2013) grew a lot since last, and first time I have heard it (in Lahti-gig). I still can’t get over that when they present the track it sounds like the vocalist says “ten thousand creams”. This gets me trying to mishear the lyrics as baking references:BakeI command you, bakeBake the cake, with a furnaceBake the cake, with darknessBurn I command you, burn

After the audience convinced the surprised band to come back to a second encore they ended the gig with a cover they stated they hadn’t trained much. Jeff Buckley’s Dream Brother (which I thought was something by Tim Buckley, whose Starsailor I’ve had a brief acquaintance with, Jeff is actually his son).

The cover vomit of HG’s Blackout Whiteout does not do the album justice. Get a fucking room, ugh.

Especially the drummer did not seem to mind the cover as drumwork was a joy to follow. Upon further googling that song does actually appear in Hanging Garden’s Backwoods sessions Live ep from July 2015. Apparently only in Youtube. They are definitely a band that I will want to see again in the future. Their newest Blackout Whiteout is also a real grower of an album, highly recommended.